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Afterher.

I’ll never be the same person I was before I took Arianette apart with my own hands and left her in the ruins. She was so small in that bed. So breakable. I’d told myself it was duty. That taking her would be necessary. Ritual. Binding. But it hadn’t been. Not really.

It had beenbetter.

Better than I thought it could be. Samhain clouded my judgment, luring me in with the drumbeat of celebration, with the promise of sacrifice. She was beautiful. Soft.Innocent.Dancing under the moonlight like a garden sprite. She’d been a vision, her skin slick with revelry, her eyes filled with desire. She hadn’t fought me when it was time to claim her.

No.

The way she cried under me–it wasn’t from fear. Not really. It was trust. She gave herself to me, and I took her like a starving animal. I didn’t stop when she asked me to slow down. I didn’twantto.

For a heartbeat I allowed it. Allowed this fleeting thought to float through my mind. A new beginning. A new family. Someone soft and sexy and warm to crawl into bed with at night.

But then the truth set in while she slept, warm and satiated, cradled against my side. She hadn’t even seen my face. She’d married a phantom. A demon cloaked in black and gold. A monster who destroyed families. Escorted death.

Filled crypts.

And now, sitting down in a room of flesh and pleasure, all I can think about is that look in her eyes when I rejected her, clasping the collar around her throat, and pulled out the rod. The quiet betrayal. I’d done what I do best. Made her pay for getting too close–for believing that there was more to me than just obligation.

She brought out the monster. Which is ironic, considering how long I’ve worn the title.

“Someone looks haunted,” a voice purrs. “Want some company?”

I glance up. A woman slides into the booth across from me, uninvited. Early thirties. Sheer black dress, no bra, nothing underneath. Her confidence is louder than the music. The exact opposite of the little doll I left broken on the cabin floor.

“I don’t bite,” she says. “Unless you ask nicely.”

I don’t smile or react to her unsubtle flirting, but I don’t send her away either.

She plucks my glass from the table, takes a sip of the soda. “Club only? That’s dangerous. Means you’re really feeling it.”

My fingers curl against the table. I decide to play. “What do you think I’m feeling?”

“Regret.” Her gaze sharpens. “Or guilt. Same flavor, different vintage.” I lift an eyebrow, which only seems to embolden her. “You’re Timothy Maddox,” she states, leaning forward until her breast touches my arm. “Your name is on the building.”

“I am, and it is.”

“What’s got a man with your power sitting down here all alone instead of up there, looking over the city like a god?”

I let the silence hang before I answer. “I lost control. Allowed myself to feel things I shouldn’t.”

She doesn’t mock me for it. She just tips her head. “You’re allowed to feel, especially the good stuff. Even men like you.”

I laugh once, sharp and humorless. “Nice try, sweetheart, but no, even when we experience it, we don’t get to keep it.”

She licks her too plump lips, altered, just like her tits. “How about you let me show you? Right here in front of everyone. Maybe that’ll make it better.”

Her hand stretches across my thigh, her razor-sharp fingernails grazing over the top of my pants. I let it happen, just for a second. Just long enough to imagine what it would be liketo let go again. To forget. To drag someone into the dark and lose control.

And for that second, Idowant to. I want to prove that it’s just a woman I needed. Any woman with a warm, wet pussy to release into. That’s all. But the second passes, and I pull my hand back like she burned me.

“No,” I say. Cold. Final. Something shifts behind her eyes. Disappointment, maybe fear. I lean in, low and quiet. “You don’t want what’s under the surface, sweetheart. You think you do. You don’t.”

She sits back.

I catch my reflection in the black lacquered table… Jaw clenched. Eyes rimmed with exhaustion.

That’s not Maddox. That’s theKing.